Trends...

... your Employees, Customers & Partners Want You to Embrace.

5

TODAY PEOPLE HAVE EXPECTATIONS…DIGITAL EXPECTATIONS. These expectations have now found their way into the workplace. Your customers, channel / sales partners and employees all have more influence than ever before. They are forcing many companies to disrupt their staid, traditional processes and models; these three groups want you to evolve as fast as they are evolving in their personal lives. Think about it…the iPad was introduced in April 2010 and today it is no longer considered advanced technology. It is just a part of everyday life.

But companies are expected to do more than just embrace new technologies; they are expected to support a personalized experience. This means constantly reworking business and communication processes (while embracing a never-ending stream of disruptive technologies) in order to improve market share, wallet share and customer retention.

So ask yourself…will your company be part of the disruption or one of the disrupted?

Workers are 17% more satisfied with their workplace culture when they have access to effective digital collaboration tools.

Nearly 3 out of 4 consumers prefer to solve their customer service issues on their own.

SO WHAT TRENDS DO YOU NEED TO EMBRACE?

Your customers, partners and employees are very clear in their demands; they want the most efficient way to interact with your business, as well as instant access to information and prompt resolutions to their problems.

The threshold of service continues to get higher, with the vast majority of the population not wanting to talk to people in their search for resolution and/or information. This means that:

– Self-service is considered to be a good thing

– Companies need to find ways to meet this consideration in cost-effective ways in order to stay competitive

So what is a company to do? While your approach will be influenced by your specific marketplace and competitive environment, it is critical that you develop strategies to address the five trends covered in the following pages. Do it before your competition does.

65% of all consumers say that they feel good about themselves and the company they are doing business with when they resolve a problem without talking to customer service.

65%feel good

EMBRACE AN OMNI-CHANNEL MINDSET – NO MATTER YOUR INDUSTRY A lot has changed over the last 20 years.There are so many more ways to communicate now, both inside and outside of an organization. Communication preferences can be generational or situational. For example, people that would normally chat online with a customer service rep or log into a portal, might make a phone call while driving.

These differences present challenges to today’s companies. Customers, employees and partners want to interact over a range of communication channels, including phone, email, live chat/chat rooms, social media, online forms, and text, and they want the experience to be consistent regardless of the channel. Therefore, businesses in this Age of Connections need to build a more comprehensive approach where they prioritize being “omnipresent” in the minds of their customers, partners and employees.

Trend189% of respondents to a recent survey want different options (voice, email, text, chat, communities) available for customer support.

89%want options

PROVIDE INSTANT ANSWERS We live in a 24/7 world. Customers, partners and employees will disconnect from you – fast – if they cannot find what they need. Once that happens, there is no chance to nurture leads or to make sales. The expectation is that it should only take a simple mouse-click to get the information needed.

If your employees and partner reps can access and share relevant content (price sheets, product brochures, etc.) the moment they need it, they can more effectively address customers’, clients’ and prospects’ pain points. This allows them to more effectively position themselves as a valuable resource, therefore, propelling the sales cycle forward.

But there will be times when content is simply not available, and your reps / partners / employees won’t have all the answers, which is why collaboration is key. With an online collaborative community, it is easy to identify the expert who can help. Each community profile lists the member’s role, expertise and contact information. That way, there are no more email /text/phone tsunamis filled with questions, answers and redirections; everyone knows how to find who (and what) they need.

Trend2

52%abandon purchases

52% of consumers will abandon online purchases if they cannot find a quick answer.

TREAT MOBILE AS THE PRIMARY ENGAGEMENT TOOL, NOT AS A “NICE TO HAVE” Mobile has the unique ability to improve the user experience and business processes that support that experience. It adds both content and functionality to external and internal interactions. Today’s digital consumer has (on average) 3 connected devices. Time spent on mobile devices accessing the Internet has overtaken time on all other devices.

Unfortunately, many companies have been slow to integrate a mobile-first mindset into their communication channel strategies and business processes.

Having a mobile-first mindset is much more than changing the image and text sizes on websites so that the digital content “fits” properly on a mobile device’s screen. It requires an understanding of the buyer’s journey so that the user’s experience remains consistent across all devices. For example:

– Heavily used features should be prominently positioned on any mobile optimized version

– Every touchpoint should be simplified, by utilizing checkboxes and dropdown lists in your forms and allowing users to log in via their social media accounts

Trend3 Mobile app usage is 6x higher than browser usage when accessing websites.

6xhigher

ANTICIPATE THE USER’S NEEDSIt is easy to react to a request, but today’s customers, partners and employees expect organizations to anticipate their needs. This requires that companies take the massive amounts of data that they are collecting, and analytically transform that data into actionable insights.

This analysis is at the heart of the digital transformation. Companies have built customer service organizations to deal with problems - after the fact. The time has now come to think two or three steps ahead of the customer…the partner…and the employee. Each unique audience needs their journey mapped out and their needs anticipated. Companies need to take into account all the channels that are being used and what they are trying to do.

And it will be the cloud that will make this all possible. When customers are connected and employees and partners can collaborate, companies can anticipate service needs and initiate actions as required….before anyone even realizes that they have a need.

Being proactive with your customers’ needs has the potential to deliver:

– 20-30% reduction in inbound customer service call volumes

– 25% lower call center operating costs

– 3-5% boost in customer retention

Trend4

EMBRACE A COLLABORATIVE ENVIRONMENTCollaboration is dependent upon communities, and a sense of community has always been a fundamental human need. After years of disconnecting from one another, people are now using technology to reconnect again. We are embracing self-service technology to find answers on our own, and when we cannot, we are finding trusted contacts (that we have interacted with online) to gain that information.

Online communities offer people the opportunity to:

– More efficiently resolve issues/concerns/problems

– Drive their own experience…one that they choose for their own needs

– Find the trusted resources they need to get the answers they want

Salesforce’s Community Cloud is supporting this new “Age of Connection” by transforming the way companies interact with customers. It offers a single system of engagement that drives both the self-service “can-do” attitude and collaboration... with customers, partners and employees. Approximately 30% of service departments have already invested in Community Cloud… they are your competition and they are offering your customers, partners and employees what they want. So again ask yourself…will your company be part of the disruption or one of the disrupted?

Trend534% of customers say that they believe what a “trusted contact” says about a company.

34%believe

ARE YOU GETTING LEFT BEHIND? IF SO, YOU CAN CHANGE THAT…QUICKLY!Are your competitors making it easier for your customers, partners and employees to do business with them? If they are giving them the tools they want, and you are not, Keste can get you quickly on track.

We are the best in the world at building modern collaborative digital communities that enable companies to:

– Achieve a sustainable competitive advantage by creating a superior collaborative experience for your partners, customers and/or employees

– Provide their customers, partners and employees the ability to get information quickly, thereby freeing human resources to focus on the most complex issues

– Achieve higher engagement levels and leverage the power of collaboration

So if you are a Salesforce customer, we are YOUR sales process automation experts; we focus on helping our clients get the maximum return from their Salesforce investment. In today’s era of mish-mashed cloud, on-premise and legacy systems and platforms, we can cut through the clutter and show you how evolving cloud technologies can transform your business to become more responsive and cost-effective. Contact: solutions@keste.com or +1 877-537-8360 to learn more.

Or, visit us online to see our entire solutions portfolio at: www.keste.com

At Keste, we help companies migrate to the cloud to achieve real business benefits. Based on our extensive product knowledge and deep skill base — with Sales/Service Cloud, Communities, Pardot, Lightning, force.com and Heroku — we deliver complete, integrated solutions that provide anywhere access, improve service capabilities, boost sales performance and increase customer satisfaction. Combined with our ability to enable Configure Price Quote (CPQ) solutions from directly within Salesforce and fully integrate with key ERP systems, Keste can help you realize maximum value out of your cloud and on-premise investments.